Gio's Italian Oven — Restaurant in Springfield Township

If giving a zero or negative stars rating, that’s what I would give Gio’s restaurant. We stopped to get dinner instead of going to a chain restaurant, wow what a mistake. We ordered a pizza/salad buffet and a salad buffet. I was just wanting salad and garlic bread. The bread was as flat as my plate and so hard you couldn’t even chew it. I did try the ham and bean soup which tasted like water. Therefore, I had one plate of salad and was done after that. The pizza wasn’t even that good. The waitress came to see how our meals were and I was honest and said not good. She left to get the manager. He waltzed over to the table with no urgency and says “yesss” what is wrong with the bread. I said it is as hard as a rock and he says well yes it is, it shouldn’t have been brought out looking like that to be served. He turns to walk away giving excuses about being in the kitchen making dough and blahblahblah. He was beyond irritating and was no help whatsoever. The waitress brings our bill and they charge me full price for a plate of salad and could care less about not being a happy customer. I rarely complain about food at a restaurant. Once the bill comes out I am pretty furious. I ask for the manager again expecting some type of compensation. He mosies out as if he was bothered(managers have to deal with customer complaints, it comes with the authority). He could have cared less about my concern. He told me there are 80 other things to pick from off the salad bar so I wasn’t getting a discount. I said I am not paying $12.99 for a plate of salad, at that point he shhhes me. Finally he says I’ll take half off but that’s it. Any good manager would have taken my whole “meal” off the bill. He was ignorant to be honest. As we paid and were getting up to leave the waitress gets an attitude and sarcastically says she hopes we have a great rest of our day. She was rude at that point( no tip needless to say). We are very good tippers to deserving servers. Unbelievable experience. If you’ve never eaten...

It pains me greatly to have to write this, especially since I've been dining at Vacarros/Lembos for many years and always enjoyed it. Last Sunday however, we didn't have a great experience. What I'm about to explain, I will make a bit of a concession that they were slammed busy, so I hope this will be a wakeup call for the management. First off, I'll address the salad bar issues. My S/O was trying to get some cheese, olives, and croutons for her salad . . . . . . while the salad bar attendee was holding all of these things and yet would let no one have any. Other patrons stood there waiting for him to return with replenished said items, and also needed to be reminded to do so. This went on for approximately five minutes. Also, the ladles for the dressings were not even marked, so Lo! Surprise mystery salad dressing!

Secondly, the meal itself. I had ordered what I considered OLD FAITHFUL there: The eggplant parmesean. There was hardly any sauce on it to the point I felt compelled to go back up to the salad bar and grab some of the dipping sauce for the garlic bread. My S/O got the Cheese steak sandwich with jojos. The meat was dry and the jojos were not thoroughly cooked.

Now lastly, I'll address the server. She seemed nice enough, but completely unattentive. She made a whole of three appearances to our table: Once to take our order, to bring our meals, and collect the cheque. We weren't asked if we needed refills for our drinks or even so much as ask how was the service and meal.

I'm not writing them off by any means, but as I said, I hope this review is a wakeup call for the management. I really don't wish to stop...

We ordered gnocchi w/red sauce, linguine w/alfredo sauce with sausage. For drinks we asked for sweet tea and a diet cola.Our appetizer was the meatballs. Our meals came with the salad bar and we ordered strawberry cheesecake for dessert. The salad bar was not bad. The meatballs (the size of save a lot bought frozen ones, w/as much flavor) came covered in red sauce.(did I say covered? I meant immersed) Let me say, had the red sauce been homemade instead of looking like something fresh out of a can I probably wouldn't have minded. When we received the gnocchi, it too was drowned in red sauce and was way over cooked. The linguine was fine the sauce was average. The sausage on the other hand was dry beyond belief and covered with red sauce to try and hide this fact.(why else would you serve it in red sauce when it was to be served with an alfredo dish?) Our dessert was ordered at the same time we asked for boxes.(my wife threw the gnocchi in the trash when we got home) The waitress filled my sweet tea w/reg. tea, brought my bill and told us they were getting the cheesecake ready.(Should have known there would be a problem. How do you get it ready?) 10-15 min. later this huge piece of cheesecake arrives with whipped cream and what looked like what might have been frozen strawberries at one time. The cake was still frozen. Not a little frozen, 3/4 frozen solid.(wife liked the whipped cream). When I go out to eat, I would like to eat something as good as I can make at home or better. Not from a can, not reheated, not thawed out. For what its worth the pizza...